Urban design

Ideas around the (interactive) table

A piece of software for interactive tables and screens allows users to see, modify and share all kinds of materials in real time. Even on their own laptops

In the digital world in which projects and documents have long since become intangible and can easily be shared via the web, the conversations between clients, builders and eventual third parties require new kinds of interfaces. That’s why Practix, a startup incubated in the Polo Meccatronica in Rovereto, created DraftTrade, and innovative piece of software for interactive tables and screens that makes it possible for a group of people to see, modify and share, even on their own laptops, materials of every kind. “The technology is multi-touch, that is it allows for multiple individuals to work on documents at the same time, making annotations for example”, explains Daniel Tomasini, the company’s CEO, “and in fact it allows a user to review even a very large and complex design without having to necessarily print it”.

The software can be installed on big multi-touch monitors that allow two or more people to view a project together.

The change presented by this technology is epochal, because it enables users to free themselves of the enormous sheets of paper, usually printed on plotters, needed to present the large project maps required to evaluate building and landscaping planning permission applications. It’s no coincidence that the startup, which addresses the public administration’s need to digitalise, installed their first setup in the offices of the Municipality of Langhirano (PR), where it took charge of services relating to the management of the territory, building and urban planning. The projects and details can be sent digitally and, once saved in the cloud, are available to anyone who wants to view them, even remotely, but most of all they can be easily viewed down to the smallest detail and changed while the Commission is carrying out its work, with the advantage that any notes and changes are saved for all participants to see. “The project is revolutionary because it reduces the cost and time needed to manage the paper documents associated with projects and it increases transparency in the debates and dialogue with the community”, says the mayor Giordano Bricoli.

Practix doesn’t limit itself to the realm of architects, technicians and engineers, the company also wants to apply its know-how to other spheres: they build customised software for interactive tables designed for entertainment, like those on cruise ships, and for edutainment in museums, like the table project designed for the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano where a digital version of the Ötzi mummy was created that multiple people can explore at once.

Three remarkable new lighting schemes – the Chapterhouse of the Scuola...

10 June 2019

Founded in 1961 by Piera Peroni Abitare magazine has crossed the history of costume, architecture and design, international, following in its pages the evolution of our ways of life and how we inhabit places